On Tue, 12 Sep 1995, Nicole Virginia Boultinghouse wrote:
> year and a half two years? I feel like a fool and I hope I haven't
> stumbled upon a secret sect of Swat Kat fans. If I have can I join???
> Just curious, about how many people are here?
Hi Niki...there's about 50-odd (and some of us are _very_ odd) on the
mailing list, and there's a bunch of lurkers about the newsgroup too. We
have a Web/FTP site with SwatKats pics, fanfic, unused Hanna-Barbera
script premises (soon to be the actual scripts, BTW) and a bunch of other
stuff.
One of us is putting out a fanzine shortly and is looking for submissions
- Tim Fay (fayxx001_at_maroon.tc.umn.edu). As far as a recap of stuff goes
- here's where we're at.
Kats was canned by Turner (who owns Hanna-Barbera) halfway through the
second season of 13 eps, ostensibly because "people weren't buying enough
merchandise". Well, as there wasn't any merchandise aside from some
Taiwanese Trinkets and "Happy-Meal" style giveaways, this reason didn't
hold water with anyone associated with the project, the viewers, or the
creators; Christian and Yvon Tremblay. Many of the staff (including most
of the background artists and high-profile members of the design team)
were immediately sacked - fuelling rumours of a sudden fascination with
H-B's budget, and questions about the future of Hanna-Barbera. There was
also speculation (after some public comments by Ted Turner on H-B and the
Cartoon Network in general) that the program may've been killed because
of the violence aspect.
In Oct/Nov last year, many of the H-B staffers lobbied to save the
program, but were more or less told to live with it, and move on to the
"World Premiere Toons". Many of them aren't happy, and were well on
their way to any Emmy with the Kats and knew it. Some of us began
talking to the Tremblay Bros and others associated with the program, and
tried to coordinate a letter campaign of sorts to let Turner
Entertainment know they F***ed up. Seems that they know, but don't want
to do anything about it (phone calls are now being ignored on both the
fan and creator level by Fred Seibert and his Creep-( er.."under-") lings.
We were kind of hoping that with the release of the Home Videos,
Action Figures and SNES game that the fans' collective voice would be
heard at TPS through sales of the Kats stuff; the problem is that there
has been little or no advertising, and many people in various parts of
the country can't find the stuff. Through a Keystone-Kops comedy of
errors, the Toys came out very badly done, and this will affect sales
despite fan interest in (good) Kats ac-figures. Sad, really.
Now Hanna-Barbera and much of the Turner empire is in kind of a
parking-orbit awaiting the outcome of a takeover bid by Time-Warner. I'm
hoping that TWC (which owns Warner Bros. Animation among others) keeps
the same level of smarts they've had with their own programming, and
extends it to a revival of the Kats. We're all in "hope" mode at the
moment - I've heard very little.
Last, it looks like the only place you can watch the kats now is
either Home-video or the Cartoon Network - much of the syndicated market
appears to have dried up in favour of new-season offerings from
elsewhere. Clueless..every week creates another regular Kats viewer, and
every week we get further from any kind of action from H-B.
BTW to everyone - I scanned in some Kats model sheets (Razor and T-Bone,
"SwatKats" poster-style logo) and Rat has put them up on the site. There
will be some more as soon as my new hardware settles in.
Later.
_____________________________________________________________________________
"I think I liked him because I suspected that, in spite of his professional
and easy-going demeanor, his psyche is held together with baling wire."
"The Far Side"'s Gary Larson on his choice of Marv Newland to do the special
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Received on Tue Sep 12 1995 - 22:14:50 PDT
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